‘It’s just a no-brainer’: The case for legalising e-cigarettes

11/07/2018

Luke Grant

The perennial debate about whether to legalise e-cigarettes is unfolding all over again.

A recent report on the topic suggests the push for e-cigarettes is coming from tobacco companies, who are eager to lure another demographic into their sales market. On this reasoning, vaping is presented as being a “gateway” activity. It supposedly leads or prompts consumers towards conventional smoking products.

But Dr Attila Danko says this is not the case.

“If it was true that e-cigarettes were a massive gateway to children becoming addicted, I wouldn’t be on the side of legalising it,” says Danko.

“But the truth is, the use among young people is mostly experimental. They have found that teenagers who tried e-cigarettes also tried smoking. They’ve said that because they tried e-cigarettes and then they tried smoking, the e-cigarettes must have led to the smoking. But it’s just not the case.”

Danko says he cannot understand the resistance around legalising e-cigarettes, given that comparatively, vaping is far less dangerous when it comes to our health.

“The Royal College of Physicians, which has to be one of the most authoritative medical bodies in the world, they did one of the most extensive studies on the whole field, looking at all the research,” Danko explains.

“They concluded that vaping almost certainly represents less than 5 percent of the risk of smoking.”

“It’s just a no-brainer. Why would you allow the most harmful product to be freely sold everywhere and ban the far safer product?”